Beyond Tracking and Detracking: The Dimensions of Organizational Differentiation in Schools

Abstract

Schools use an array of strategies to match curricula and instruction to students' heterogeneous skills. Although generations of scholars have debated ''tracking'' and its consequences, the literature fails to account for diversity of school-level sorting practices. In this article, we draw on the work of Sørensen and others to articulate and develop empirical measures of five distinct dimensions of within-school cross-classroom tracking systems: (1) the degree of curricular differentiation, (2) the extent to which sorting practices generate skills-homogeneous classrooms, (3) the rate at which students enroll in advanced courses, (4) the extent to which students move between tracks over time, and (5) the relationship between track assignments across subject areas. Analyses of longitudinal administrative data following approximately 20,000 eighth graders enrolled in 23 middle schools through the 10th grade indicate that these dimensions of tracking are empirically separable and have divergent relationships with student achievement and the production of inequality.

Re-Examining the Public–Catholic School Gap in STEM Opportunity to Learn: New Evidence from HSLS

“…Doing so will also benefit students with motivation and ability to have enough time to finish advanced math courses and potentially reduce the inequality in learning opportunities across sectors in the higher end of the course-taking hierarchy. Domina et al (2019) also suggest that disadvantaged students should be provided with better access to high-achieving peers and more opportunities for skill building (see also Nomi and Raudenbush 2016).…”

Majority-minority Educational Success Sans Integration: A Comparative-International View

“…Notwithstanding this and other evidence, it is noteworthy that most scholarship focusing on educational inequality is conspicuously silent concerning these impressive outcomes. Whatever the case, the silence concerning the successes of majority-minority schools is curious to observe given, as we have seen, the relative disadvantages for many black, brown, and indigenous students in so-called "integrated" spaces due to welldocumented structural and organizational inequalities endemic to many of these schools (Darity & Jolla, 2009;Domina et al, 2019;Francis & Darity, 2021;. However uncommon the success stories may be, few scholars exhibit the same willingness to dismiss the positive outcomes of "integrated" schools as happenstance.…”

Bringing the School Back to School Research: Toward an Integrated Organizational Sociology of Education

“…Schools organize resources in many ways, but one of the most frequently studied in the sociology of education is the organization of students into distinct tracks or ability groups that may bring varied learning opportunities consequential for maintaining or aiding inequalities (Gamoran et al 1995). Ability grouping in primary schools and tracking in secondary schools are practices that cluster students in distinct courses of study depending on their aptitude or ability (Domina et al 2019). Below, I outline three key questions in studying the organization of resources, and I use this example of ability grouping to understand how resource organization can be researched.…”

“…Even within the same form of between-class tracking, outcomes may differ due to organizationspecific practices like the degree of curricular differentiation among tracks, students' mobility between tracks, and creation of skills-homogeneous classes (Domina et al 2019). Such structural variation between organizations, too, must be understood not as a primary cause but as a proximal enabler for agency.…”